Insufficient Memory

1999–2000 / 2018–2020 · Photographs, interactive Google Earth archive, installation · Collections: Brooklyn Museum; Buffalo AKG Art Museum

Between 2018 and 2020, Fader drove more than 25,000 miles across the United States to photograph the unmarked sites where LGBTQ+ people were murdered in 1999 and 2000, the same years the US Congress was debating the Hate Crimes Prevention Act. The sites were photographed with a Sony Mavica, one of the first popular consumer digital cameras, released in the year of the murders; its small files become impressionistic when printed large. On the back of each print is the story of the person killed there.

The project also lives as a public Google Earth archive, so each history can be found in the landscape where it happened. Insufficient Memory is in the collections of the Brooklyn Museum and the Buffalo AKG Art Museum.

"It's hard for me to speak (or write) about this work without tearing up. Bearing witness to these stories and spaces digs into your body. I will never forget arriving at the first location: It was a small development of apartments outside of Dallas. The second I got out of my car, my stomach turned. It was an emotion I had never felt before, a combination of deep fear for my safety and incredible loss."Sean Fader, The Advocate

Open the archive in Google Earth ↗

Draft statement and a provisional selection of ten site photographs made for this prototype; Sean to make final selects and captions.